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This piece was specially made for the GW Dundee store, so it had to be pretty robust and stand up to lots of play. It combines 3 basic techniques, (hills, rivers and plants) to make a more interesting scene. |
Materials
Method
The basic shapes were cut out of 3" polystyrene sheet with a hot wire cutter. Due to its size and shape I actually had to cut it into two pieces, and glue them back together, this is easy because the two halfs match exactly.
| The bottom peice was glued onto 3mm foamboard with PVA glue and heavy books put on top to stop it warping whilst it dried. |  |
The other peices were glued on with PVA when this was dry. The top sheet was cut from 1" polystyrene sheet, to cover the gap where the river would flow. This was to give the impression that the river was flowing out of a cave in the mountainside. Rock spires were shaped from polystyrene with the cutter. The front of the pool is made flat, so that a river section can be made to flow out of the pool (although the front is sand so it looks OK without the river).
The small palm trees are the GW plastic trees, whilst the palms are made from earth wire and pipe cleaners.
| The top 1cm of the insulation was removed from the wire and the bare wires bent back, a hot glue gun was used to stick sections of pipe cleaner to the wires, this was a little tricky as the glue tended to cool quickly so you had to be quick. |  |
I found squeezing the join between my fingers made it stick better (just be careful with the hot glue on your fingers!). A hole was dug into the hill and the tree glued in place with hot glue.
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The cactus was made from a paper ball bought from a craft store with coctail sticks stuck into it - simple! |
The waterfall was made from milliput putty, textured with an old knife.
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The whole model except the plants and the water were covered in a thick layer of PVA and covered in sand and left to dry. |
Painting
| The whole thing was sprayed black and the sand drybrushed with snakebite leather through bubonic brown up to almost white highlights. The plants were painted dark angels green and shaded by mixing in yellow and white to the green. The trunks were painted bestial brown. |  |
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The water was painted midnight blue and shaded by adding white, the waterfall was highlighted up to white to represent foam, whilst the water was more subtly shaded. The water was painted with a gloss enamel varnish for that shiny wet look. |
When all this was totally dry, patches of PVA glue were painted on and green floc added. I'm pretty pleased with how its come out, you can even see the reflection of the trees and models in the water!